An industrial 0.35 /spl mu/m SiGe BiCMOS technology for 5 GHz WLAN featuring an improved selective epitaxial growth process

A SiGe BiCMOS process with a double-polysilicon self-aligned Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor (HBT) fabricated by means of selective epitaxy has been developed. The selective epitaxial growth is improved with the use of an innovative oxy-nitride interpoly layer which increases the growth rate. The HBT features a current gain cut-off frequency f/sub T/ of 43 GHz and a maximum available cut-off frequency f/sub MAX/ of 80 GHz at a collector-emitter bias voltage of 3 V. N-p-n transistors are integrated in 0.35 /spl mu/m CMOS process with high quality RF passive components. A Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) designed in this technology for 5 GHz wireless local area networks (WLAN) demonstrated measurement data close to the simulated ones.